Design and Art Australia Online

watercolour and scene-painter, was born in Tunbridge Wells, England, son of George Roberts, toymaker. Before his marriage to Caroline Jones in London on 5 November 1832 or 1833, George junior seems to have visited North America; a surviving sketchbook (c.1820-25, Mitchell Library) contains watercolour views of both American and English subjects. In about 1840 he came to Sydney with his family and worked there as a theatrical scene-painter and carpenter for the rest of his life. 'G. Roberts’ is listed in Low’s Sydney Directory for 1844-45 as a 'painter’ (i.e. house painter) off Bathurst Street, but he was painting scenery for Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre at this time; a playbill of 1845 advertises him as the scene-painter for the first presentation of the farce True Love; or, The Interlude Interrupted by 'a Gentleman in Sydney’, with Mr Healy as mechanist. In 1847 Roberts was more correctly listed as a scene-painter of 44 Bathurst Street. That July, 'under the superintendence of Mr Torning’ ( Andrew Torning ), he painted the scenery for the pantomime The Fairy of the Coral Cave; or, Harlequin and the Magic Peacocks at the Royal Victoria, said to have abounded 'with transformations and consternations’. A 'Grand Panorama! (Painted by Mr. Roberts) illustrating the Principal Events in the Glorious Career of the immortal Nelson’ was part of the pantomime Puss in Boots; or, Harlequin and the Miller’s Son , according to the Australian of 28 December 1847 (quote Colligan, p.100).

When Sydney’s new Prince of Wales Theatre opened in 1855 its act-drop was painted by C.W. Andrews , but 'the credit of constructing the scenery [belongs] to Mr Roberts’, reported the Illustrated Sydney News . 'We are assured that it is at once the best and the largest stock in Australia, though, to our view, it is defective in some respects. It consists of about 100 pairs of flats, each of which, in the construction and painting cost £12. The subjects represented are very various and interesting.’

Roberts also painted watercolour views and was listed as an 'artist’ (painter) of Paddington in Sands’ Sydney Directory for 1861. The earliest dated works in his album The Holes and Corners of Sydney As They Are and As They Were, 1836-1864 (Dixson Library) were done in 1844 ( Scene Showing Cave Dwelling ) and 1845 ( On Church Hill and The Punchbowl, Gloucester Street, Sydney ). The undated George Street and the Royal Hotel and Commercial Exchange was copied from an engraving by W. Wilson published in the Australian Almanack and Sydney Directory for 1834, while The Old Mill, Government Domain, As It Was in 1832 was taken from Robert Russell 's Lithographic Drawings of Sydney and its Environs , published by J.G. Austin in 1836. Several appear to be preliminary works for stage designs.

Later watercolours include Glenmore Tannery (1860) and a view of Paddington from behind the site of the present St Vincent’s Hospital (1863), apparently taken from Roberts’s home in Victoria Street. Watercolours dating from the 1840s to the 1860s in family possession include views of the Sydney Botanical Gardens, Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and the Military Barracks, Wynyard Square. Although Roberts normally identified himself only by the initials 'G.R.’, his mature work is quite distinctive. His scene-painter training remained dominant and he was particularly fond of architectural subjects and street scenes, setting his carefully drawn buildings in fluffy, frequently vertiginous, hilly landscapes with tiny out-of-scale figures. The City of Sydney Public Library holds nine of his watercolours of Paddington (1859-63), including View of Oxford Street, Leading up to Victoria Barracks, Portion of Glenmore Road, with Bellevue Hill and Rushcutter’s Bay in the Distance; and the Sand Hills in the Foreground (1863). Numerous watercolour sketches of the architecture of Sydney ( Old Mill, Gordon Street ) and its environs, particularly the eastern suburbs, are in the Mitchell Library.

While watching a performance at the Royal Victoria Theatre on 11 May 1865, Roberts collapsed with heart failure and died in the pit-passage. His 15-year-old daughter took his body in a cab to his residence in 'Woolloomooloo’ (his Victoria Street home where he had been living with his three surviving children: two daughters and a son, George William Roberts). The report of his death in Bell’s Life referred to him as 'one of the oldest scene-painters in the colony’.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011